The Forest Certification Handbook

Christopher Upton, Kogan Page Ltd.

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781884015892
• eBook ISBN: 9781000673739
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Environmental Management
• Index: Biological Sciences

From forester to retailer, stakeholders in the industry are under increasing pressure to assure customers that their wood products have come from well managed, sustainable forests. The Forest Certification Handbook gives practical advice on developing, selecting and operating a certification programme which provides both market security and raises standards of forestry management. It provides a thorough analysis of all the issues surrounding certification, including the commercial benefits to be gained, the policy mechanisms required, the interpretation and implementation of forestry management standards, and the process of certification itself. Three unique directories give details of currently certified forests, international and national initiatives, and active certification programmes.

1. Introduction

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Concern for forest problems has increased dramatically over the last decade. For numerous reasons over 200 million hectares of forest have been lost in the tropics and large areas of boreal, temperate and tropical forest have degraded in quality. As pressures have increased on remaining forest areas, conflicts have grown between ‘stakeholders’ — those who live in forests, forest industries, governments, and the public at large — who depend in different ways on the environmental, social and economic benefits provided by forests.

The traditional — usually government-led — approach to forest problems has been regulatory. In poor countries this approach has often been supplemented by aid-funded programmes. In general, these efforts have proved insufficient to reduce either forest loss or forest degradation. At the country level, forest legislation may be inadequate to assure improvements in forest management; and customary rules governing local forest use may not be recognized. Alternatives are required to redress the deficiencies in existing mechanisms. There is a need to recognize the wider asset value of forests throughout the world; and for new instruments to be developed which enable forest owners in rich and poor countries to get the best return within a context of sustainable forest management.

In the meantime public impatience — especially in North America, Europe and Australasia — with lack of progress and disillusionment over the effectiveness of existing forest initiatives are resulting in moves to look at the possibilities of market-based, voluntary approaches. The assumption behind these initiatives is that consumer interest in the forest dilemma is strong.

It is further assumed that this interest may cause discrimination in favour of timber from sustainably-managed forests, and a willingness to pay any associated extra cost. It is also thought that public acceptability of wood and paper products from sustainably-managed forests will help to maintain their market share against substitute non-wood products. This is based on the assumption that the public appreciates the inherent virtues of wood and paper products as deriving from a renewable resource and being ultimately biodegradable.

However, the converse of this assumption worries some stakeholders — namely that consumer concern over forest conditions may result in a discrimination against timber and paper products that the consumer perceives to derive from unsustainably-managed forests.

These assumptions have provided the impetus for development of forest certification — hereafter referred to as certification. This has four key parameters:

1   Certification has the twin objectives of (a) working as a market incentive to improve forest management; and (b) improving market access and share for the products of such management.

2   Certification is conceived as an economic, market-based instrument and as such participation in certification programmes should be, and currently is, voluntary.

3   Certification takes place by assessing the effect of forest activities against standards previously agreed as significant and acceptable to stakeholders.

4   Certification is undertaken by third party organizations which have no self interest in a specific forest activity; which are not stakeholders in the forests being certified; and which can assure the public of independent and professional judgement.

Governments, corporations and other people deriving their livelihood from forests, as well as consumers, need to be in a position to know whether the attention given to certification is justified. The key questions amount to:

•  Can certification and current certification initiatives be of real use in slowing forest loss and degradation, whilst assuring the objectives of improved forest management?

•  Is certification in fact a distraction from fundamental issues; or even actively damaging by pulling resources into activities that fail to create real change?

•  Is certification, as currently established, practicable? Will it provide participants with the commercial advantage they seek? Which groups might lose out if certification becomes widespread?

Current certification initiatives are developing against a rapidly-changing background of international and national initiatives in forestry, biodiversity, conservation, environmental management systems and trade — many of which also aim to achieve sustainable forestry on the ground. Within this context, there is scope to focus certification so that its potential contribution can be fully realized.

Sustainable forest management is an inherent aim of certification. It is the ultimate goal to which certified forests should aspire, but such a goal is reached only through a period of transition, during which management standards are progressively established and fine-tuned. The explicit aim of certification is to improve the quality of forest management so as to reach this goal.

The practice of certification has to be precise, unambiguous and repeatable in its assessment; while the paradox is that perspectives on sustainable forest management differ, and have often been expressed vaguely and ambiguously. Reconciling this difference is perhaps the most difficult part in developing and operating a certification programme.

Attempts at defining what is required in terms of sustainable forest management are almost always controversial. While it is possible to secure a consensus over general principles, it is difficult to achieve this for standards designed to be used at the forest level. In certification, we prefer to use the term quality forestry to describe a performance of forest management that is considered adequate: ie, that is basic to the transition to sustainable forest management.

Quality forestry is defined as that which is environmentally sensitive, socially aware and economically viable:^*

•  Forestry is defined as being environmentally sensitive when its impact upon the environment is both assessed and negative aspects minimized.

•  Forestry is defined as being socially aware when it recognizes that its activities have an impact both on local people and society at large. Socially aware forestry, therefore, encourages all stakeholders to enjoy long-term benefits of the forest, provides strong incentives to local people to sustain the forest resources and adhere to long-term management plans, and provides for an appropriate distribution of costs.

•  Forestry is defined as being economically viable when forest operations are structured and managed to be sufficiently profitable for ensuring the stability of operations and a genuine commitment to principles of quality forestry. Economic viability does not mean financial profit at the expense of the forest resource, the ecosystem, affected communities, or society as a whole.

The focus of a certification programme is at the forest level. In certification, this area is defined as the Local Forest Management Unit [LFMU]. Usually the LFMU is managed by a single owner or operator. However, there are instances where this is not the case. The area being certified must have a common management system but may be owned by several individuals grouped together, by a community or even lie within a single administrative boundary within which forestry activities are regulated by a national forest service. In this book, we refer to the area being certified as the LFMU. Selection of an appropriate LFMU is a critical part of the certification process having a significant impact on the costs of certification. Chapter 8 includes a discussion on selection of the LFMU.

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^* This definition of quality forestry is consistent with the FSC principles used for certification — see Box 24 and the entry for FSC in Chapter 11 for further details.

In addition, certification will always be of a forest area that is being managed. Certification, therefore, assumes that prior decisions have been made with regard to different land uses and in setting aside areas as national parks for protection and conservation. Certification cannot assess whether or not a particular forest area should be managed. In this book we assume that certification takes place in production forest areas designated at the national policy level as part of a permanent forest estate (PFE). Moreover in the future it is likely that acceptable mechanisms will be introduced to allow for conversion forests in certification — provided that such areas form part of an overall sustainable land use plan.

There is much confusion over the practice of certification at the national level. Certification requires an adequate policy context and certain incentives to be in place for it to be effective. These are best defined at the national level. Accreditation authorities may also be national bodies. However, in order for a certification programme to accommodate the needs of international trade, general principles and criteria should be established at an international level and interpreted for direct application at the forest level by the LFMU and certification body. Such an approach ensures international harmonization; it is the principle behind the development and certification of ISO standards — such as ISO 9000 for Quality Assurance; and is the one used in this book.

Sustainable development — the balanced achievement of economic, social and environmental objectives now and for the future — rarely has a single solution. This is because decisions on the relative values of economic, social and environmental factors are subjective; and consensus is nearly always required between stakeholders. No one stakeholder view has universal authority and all solutions need to be adaptable to local circumstances. If there is one fundamental premise of this book, it is that the role and practice of certification within this process of integration and trade-off has to be clearly identified; not only in terms of national forest and land use policy but also so that it fits with local needs and practicalities.

Part 1

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Certification in Context

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2. Forest Problems

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A major reason for writing this handbook is to explore how certification could help to solve the real problems affecting forests and people dependent upon them. This chapter sets the scene by introducing the main forest problems and their causes.

Each country and each LFMU will experience a different set of problems to varying degrees. These problems mean that forests are unable to realize their potential contribution to economic and social development. Some of the problems have a global dimension as well. Broadly speaking, the most significant are:

• Reduction of forest area and quality: the quantity and quality of forests is declining. This is because wood, fuel, food and fodder are being cut at rates which are faster than forest regeneration; because remaining growing stock is often poorly managed; and because many forests are being cleared to make way for other land uses. Reforestation is not of equal quantity nor quality – that is, it does not replace all the benefits of natural forest.

• Environmental degradation of forest areas: forest exploitation and clearance can create other interlinked problems; notably soil erosion, watershed destabilization and micro-climatic change. Industrial air pollution, particularly common in some temperate forests, reduces forest health. Many forest environmental benefits cannot be supplied by other land users.

• Loss of biodiversity: the above problems are contributing to a rapid reduction in ecosystem, species and genetic diversity in both natural and planted forests. This lowers the world’s biological potential for improving material, food and medicine production. With tropical forests being perhaps the major repository of biodiversity, forest abuse in tropical regions has caused much concern.

• Loss of cultural assets and knowledge: the often-undocumented culture and knowledge of many peoples, which have evolved through long periods of nurturing the forest, are diminishing as forest area reduces, as access to forest is increasingly restricted, and as traditional rights are eroded. This leaves mankind as a whole with a smaller knowledge base for forest stewardship.

• Loss of livelihood: all the above problems are affecting the livelihoods of forest-dependent peoples – particularly poorer groups in poor countries who may not have significant agricultural land, and who depend on forests for ‘social security’. With such people marginalized from the forest, social and economic problems are created elsewhere, such as in cities.

• Climate change: it is probable that the cumulative effect of global forest loss and environmental degradation will contribute to regional and global climate imbalances. Forests play a major role in carbon storage: with their removal, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may lead to global warming with its many problematic side-effects.

Although each stakeholder group within a country tends to emphasize only one or two problems (the environment, or land rights, or poverty etc), the more the problems are analysed, the clearer it becomes that these problems are linked. Forest problems are the result of a syndrome of many causes; and action on only one front will rarely solve them.

Many of the causes which underlie most forest problems arise outside the forestry and forest industry sectors. Consequently, activities from within these sectors alone are unlikely to solve forest problems.

Basic market, policy and inst...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Foreword by Duncan Poore
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• Part 1 Certification in Context
• Part 2 Certification in Practice
• Part 3 Current Initiatives and Views
• Part 4 Directories
• Bibliography
• Glossary